Speaker Pelosi’s Constitutional Crisis
The Speaker does not have the authority to take impeachment off the table, and the sooner she admits this the better off the nation will be.
Put away the flags
By Howard Zinn
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
No Review of Sweetener Over Cancer Fears
Another European study raises doubts about the safety of aspartame, but many don’t realize it was Donald Rumsfeld who got “fast track” approval of the artificial sweetener as then-CEO of Searle (now part of Monsanto). The approval was one of Reagan’s first acts in office, thanks to a FDA commissioner who rewrote the rules for approval and would later do PR work for Monsanto/Searle! Not so sweet?
[thx RK]
The Other Side of the Desk
June 27, 2007, 8:55 pm
by Lee Kelley
I will always remember that day in 2004 when I sat on the business side of a Lieutenant Colonel’s desk as he “invited” me to go to Iraq with his battalion. Now, as a company commander in the Utah National Guard, one of my duties has been to send others to fight the war in Iraq.
Fair Game: Risk-Aversion Therapy on Wall St.
GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Investors have some nerve to dump Blackstone’s shares — don’t they know who Steve Schwarzman is?
Dog Paddling in the Tigris
London
It’s too early to pronounce the U.S. military’s surge in Iraq a failure. It’s not too early to say, though, that there’s no sign that it’s succeeding — that it’s making Iraqi politics or security better in any appreciable, self-sustaining way. At best, the surge is keeping Iraq from descending into full-scale civil war. At best we are dog paddling in the Tigris. Which means at least we should start to think about what happens if we have to get out of the water.
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Tears on My Pillow
By MAUREEN DOWD
“I miss Albania!” W. wails. “They know how to treat a president there. Women were kissing me and men rubbed my hair. The crowd kept yelling, ‘Bushie!,’ and they almost grabbed the watch right off my wrist trying to get at me.”
When the Vice President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal
WHO knew that mocking the Constitution could be nearly as funny as shooting a hunting buddy in the face? Among other comic dividends, Dick Cheney’s legal theory that the vice president is not part of the executive branch yielded a priceless weeklong series on “The Daily Show” and an online “Doonesbury Poll,” conducted at Slate, to name Mr. Cheney’s indeterminate branch of government.
First artificial life ‘within months’
Scientists could create the first new form of artificial life within months after a landmark breakthrough in which they turned one bacterium into another.
From reading DNA to writing it
Audio: Roger Highfield on the significance of the breakthrough
Court Allows Student’s Anti-Bush T-Shirt
Putting its recent ruling on student speech into practice, the Supreme Court on Friday rejected a school district’s appeal of a ruling that it violated a student’s rights by censoring his anti-Bush T-shirt.
A seventh-grader from Vermont was suspended for wearing a shirt that bore images of cocaine and a martini glass _ but also had messages calling President Bush a lying drunk driver who abused cocaine and marijuana, and the “chicken-hawk-in-chief” who was engaged in a “world domination tour.”
Richard Scrushy’s road to prison
Former HealthSouth CEO who beat fraud charges will spend years behind bars for bribery conviction
Richard Scrushy, the rehabilitation king turned TV preacher, is trading his 92-foot yacht for a jailhouse bunk.
The French Lesson In Health Care
The nation’s system isn’t quite as superb as Sicko maintains, but it’s pretty good
Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko trumpets France as one of the most effective providers of universal health care. His conclusions and fist-in-your-gut approach may drive some Americans up the wall. But whatever you think of Moore, the French system—a complex mix of private and public financing—offers valuable lessons for would-be health-care reformers in the U.S.
Border barrier accidentally crosses border
The 1.5-mile barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border was designed to keep cars from illegally crossing into the United States. There’s just one problem: It was accidentally built on Mexican soil.
Embarrassed border officials say the mistake could cost the federal government more than $3 million to fix.
Dems to confront Bush again on Iraq pullout
Pelosi, Reid say House and Senate will vote in July — won’t wait for report on surge
Britain under attack as bombers strike at airport
Britain was last night put on its highest state of security alert after an attempted car firebombing at Glasgow airport raised fears of a new wave of terrorist attacks.
Gordon Brown placed the country on a “critical” threat level, indicating that MI5 believes a terrorist attack is expected “imminently”.
Imminent Crises: Threats and Opportunities
Regrettably, there are all too many candidates that qualify as imminent and very serious crises. Several should be high on everyone’s agenda of concern, because they pose literal threats to human survival: the increasing likelihood of a terminal nuclear war, and environmental disaster, which may not be too far removed. However, I would like to focus on narrower issues, those that are of greatest concern in the West right now. I will be speaking primarily of the United States, which I know best, and it is the most important case because of its enormous power. But as far as I can ascertain, Europe is not very different.
by Noam Chomsky
Courage Without the Uniform
By TIMOTHY EGAN
Published: June 30, 2007
PORTLAND, Ore.
Every time a soldier from Oregon dies in the Iraq war, Senator Gordon Smith calls up the mother or surviving spouse, and commiserates. His son killed himself four years ago, he tells them. He knows what it’s like to lose a boy.
When Is Enough Enough?
BOB HERBERT
June 30, 2007
Chances are you didn’t hear it, but on Thursday night Senator Hillary Clinton said, “If H.I.V./AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country.”
Secret trials for terrorists, says US judge
A TOP-RANKING US judge has stunned a conference of Australian judges and barristers in Chicago by advocating secret trials for terrorists, more surveillance of Muslim populations across North America and an end to counter-terrorism efforts being “hog-tied” by the US constitution.
Fayyad warns Islamic preachers
The new Palestinian prime minister delivered a stern warning Thursday to hundreds of Islamic preachers, including Hamas supporters: He won’t tolerate calls for violence delivered from mosque pulpits and plans to collect militants’ weapons.
An open letter to the new Prime Minister
Patrick Cockburn
Dear Mr Brown
Peace can only be returned to Iraq by a negotiated end to the occupation and an acceptance by Washington and London that the Shia religious parties, in alliance with the Kurds and influenced by Iran, are going to run the country.
Surging toward disaster in Iraq
As the U.S. takes sides in Iraq’s splintering civil war, a top Republican warns Bush’s policy will fail.
By Juan Cole
—
Bush Turns Iraq into Israel/Palestine;
Gaffe endangers US Troops
Bush said in a speech on Thursday that he hopes Iraq will be like Israel, a democracy that faces terrorist violence but manages to retain its democratic character
Extreme weather wakes US up to climate change
US public opinion is rapidly waking up to the threat posed by global warming, despite the best efforts of the Bush Administration and much of industry to deny the problem.
There has been a double-digit increase in the proportion of Americans who say environmental problems are a major global threat - from 23 per cent to 37 per cent, according to a comprehensive survey published this week by the Pew Centre in Washington.
Right-Wingers Are on the Defensive About Talk Radio Dominance
On its face, quantifying the conservative domination of talk-radio is about as valuable as studying the leftward lean in women’s studies departments at American universities. The conventional wisdom is that during the 1980s, talk-radio tapped into a substantial group of angry, white and mostly male listeners who blamed their perceived loss of influence on what they believed were real powers in American society: feminists, gays, black kids applying for affirmative action programs and potty-mouthed Hollywood screenwriters. It was a niche market — AM radio was a dying format waiting for an infusion of energy — and the Limbaughs and Hannitys gave the people what they wanted.
Wall Street Journal reporters protest possible sale
Wall Street Journal reporters skipped work Thursday morning to demonstrate the need for editorial independence as owner Dow Jones & Co. weighs a $5 billion offer from Rupert Murdoch, the employees’ union said.
The Murdoch Factor
by Paul Krugman
In October 2003, the nonpartisan Program on International Policy Attitudes published a study titled “Misperceptions, the media and the Iraq war.” It found that 60 percent of Americans believed at least one of the following: clear evidence had been found of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda; W.M.D. had been found in Iraq; world public opinion favored the U.S. going to war with Iraq.
FBI Spying on the National Lawyers Guild
By MARJORIE COHN
In 1937, the American Bar Association refused to allow people of color to join its ranks. With the blessing of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the National Lawyers Guild was founded as a multi-racial alternative to the ABA. The Guild’s founding members included the attorney general, several judges, some congressmen, and the head of the National Labor Relations Board.
‘You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression’ by Matthew Rothschild
THOM HARTMANN’S “INDEPENDENT THINKER” BOOK OF THE MONTH REVIEW
I’m a pretty jaded guy. Back in October of 2001, I wrote — first anonymously under the pseudonym “Rusticus” and then over my own name — the first widely-circulated article comparing the Republican response to 9/11 with the Nazi response to the burning of the Reichstag (Parliament) building in Germany in 1933 (it was titled “When Democracy Failed”). It was widely distributed and I was attacked for being an alarmist, although few say so these days.
Congress Needs to Stop Playing in Bush’s Court
There are two ways to look at the growing confrontation between Congress and the White House over access to information.
The Misunderestimated Mr. Cheney
The Vice President’s Record of Willfully Violating the Law, And Wrongly Claiming Authority to Do So
By JOHN W. DEAN
Bush May Be Out of Chances For a Lasting Domestic Victory
He looked uncharacteristically dejected as he approached the lectern, fiddling with papers as he talked and avoiding the sort of winking eye contact he often makes with reporters. And then President Bush did something he almost never does: He admitted defeat.
Red State Welfare
By TIMOTHY EGAN
Published: June 28, 2007
Drive across the empty reaches of the Great Plains, from the lost promise of Valentine, Neb., to the shadowless side roads into Sunray, Tex., and what you see is a land that has lost its purpose. Many of the towns set in this infinity of flat have a listless look, with shuttered main streets and schools given over to the grave.
Wacht Am Potomac
A distillation of news from various sources reacting to the journalistic “horse’s head on the pillow” which The Washington Post delivered to Vice President Richard Cheney Sunday through Wednesday of this week.
Polonium On The Potomac Cui Bono Edition
Polonium On The Potomac Part Three
Polonium On The Potomac Part One
Young Americans Are Leaning Left, New Poll Finds
[That headline makes me think of this song's refrain.]
A Place Where Women Rule
All-Female Village in Kenya Is a Sign Of Burgeoning Feminism Across Africa
Ten years ago, a group of women established the village of Umoja, which means unity in Swahili, on an unwanted field of dry grasslands. The women said they had been raped and, as a result, abandoned by their husbands, who claimed they had shamed their community.
Stung by the treatment, Lolosoli, a charismatic and self-assured woman with a crown of puffy dark hair, decided no men would be allowed to live in their circular village of mud-and-dung huts.
In an act of spite, the men of her tribe started their own village across the way, often monitoring activities in Umoja and spying on their female counterparts.
The Old World gets a makeover
Europe rearranges itself for the future while our government ties itself in knots
Privatize Medicare? NO WAY
“Privatize Medicare? NO WAY!” shows how the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act threatens to privatize Medicare, irreparably harming over 40 million seniors and disabled people, and driving Medicare itself into bankruptcy and oblivion. We need to solve the problems of both Medicare and the uninsured by extending Medicare to cover everyone with expanded benefits: Medicare for All, also known as Single-Payer healthcare. (more…)
THE GATES INHERITANCE
THE GATES INHERITANCE, Part 3
The world that Bob made
The new US secretary of defense travels the American world, to Kabul and Baghdad in particular, where he frets about Tehran - only to find himself confronting the consequences of the misdeeds of his younger self. In the first two parts of this three-part series, Roger Morris covered the world and spy agency that “made Bob”. Now, he turns to the world that Bob made. It’s a tale of terror bombs and secret plots, of internecine warfare within the CIA and in the Hindu Kush.
Part 1: The tortured world of US intelligence
Part 2: Great games and famous victories
CIA conspired with mafia to kill Castro
Agency publishes secret documents detailing plot 702 pages reveal illegal activities up to 1973
Simon Tisdall in Washington-Wednesday June 27, 2007
